To quote the old cliche “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” Bioware seems to be taking a page out of Blizzard’s book as the EA owned game developer announced today that SWTOR is going to be free to play up until level 15 starting this coming July. Seen as an attempt to try to save a failing game franchise that is hemorrhaging both money and subscribers, it looks like Bioware has hopes that emulating the free-to-play model that games like World of Warcrafthave adopted will bring new players into the fold.

Coming as part of another major update to the game, players will also be given a new world to explore called “Makeb” which of course will bring new quests and tasks with it.

This move doesn’t come as a very big surprise as there have been sites like TOR Status that have been tracking the steadily declining server load that Bioware has had to contend with. Looking at a current graph you can see that the game hasn’t endured a heavy load in some time, which must be worrisome to the games developers. Less load means less players, a data set that will match what they are looking at in terms of the bottom line in subscription sales as well.

Bioware isn’t unfamiliar with this course of action with its titles. The Warhammer Online series of games went first to a level cap then went totally free to play as a result of a small player base. It’s hard to believe that one of the biggest MMO launches in recent gaming history is already struggling to keep players interested, but it’s hard to argue with the numbers of people logging in.